Commenting on Acts 15:13-21, Johannes Munck wrote:
The speech of James led directly to the settlement of the matter. James used the form Symeon (also found in II Pet I 1) instead of the usual Simon. It may seem strange that James should quote Amos ix 11-12 from the LXX and that his interpretation should depend on the peculiarities of the Greek text. This indicates that the words of James have been thoroughly reworked. According to the speech, Amos predicted that God would rebuild the ruined dwelling of David. God first took pity on the Jewish people, and once he had won them over, to reach out to the Gentiles and convert them. This attitude toward missions also explains vs. 21 which has seemed incomprehensible to most people. Since the road to the conversion of the Gentiles was by way of the Jews and their synagogues in the various cities, it was both reasonable and right to show consideration for the Jews by keeping the rules mentioned in vss. 19-20—thus making co-existence possible. It was not by chance that two of the rules in the so-called Apostolic Decree were concerned with food for, as mentioned earlier (see p. LXVI), the common meals were very important to primitive Christianity. Precisely because the Law could not and was not to be kept, the one essential was to make it possible for Jews and Gentiles (that is, for Jewish Christians and Gentile Christian) to meet at the common table (Gal ii 11 ff.; Acts xi 3 ff.). The decree was aimed precisely at this; it did not offer any solution to the question of the Gentile Christians’ obedience to the law of Moses. Four things were forbidden, of which two were directly related to eating: (a) first, idol worship; (b) secondly, sexual impurity; (c) thirdly, strangulation as concerned with food. The animal must have been butchered in such a way that all the blood had been drained from it; (d) the fourth rule reiterated the Jewish prohibition against eating meat from which the blood had not been drained.
At a later time, the provisions of the Apostolic Decree were modified so as to conform with later demands of the church: thus, according to the Western text, James suggests that Gentile Christians “abstain from idolatry, from fornication, and from bloodshed and from doing to others what they would not like done to themselves.” (Johannes Munck, The Acts of the Apostles: Introduction, Translation and Notes [AB 31; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965], 140-41; emphasis added)
For a discussion of the LXX vs. Hebrew of Amos 9:11-12 and James' words as recorded in Acts 15, see the section entitled, "The Authority of the Church" in Not by Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura
Commenting on Peter’s role in this Council, Munck writes something that supports a more collegial (“Gallican” if you will) understanding of the Council and its authority structure:
12. The silence that followed might indicate the impression made by Peter’s speech, but it more likely indicated that it was now possible (cf. vs. 13) for the missionaries to the Gentiles to tell about God’s action, which like his bestowing o the Holy Spirit (vs. 8), demonstrated that, according to God’s will, the Gentiles should receive the Gospel as Gentiles. There is no need to supply the details of this narrative for they have already been given in the preceding chs. of Acts. (Ibid., 140; emphasis added)
